Mary Henry: A Long Unbroken Line

Mary Henry (American, 1913–2009) embraced geometry as relational to the structures and environments. Despite critical recognition of her work and a steady presence in exhibitions that began in 1938, her slower path as a woman artist based on the West Coast may have kept her under-recognized in the greater art world.

Though Henry made work throughout her life, with commissions for murals and freelance assignments, she was also married and raising two children. It was not until her divorce in 1964, when she was just past 50, that she began to have more time and space for her studio practice. At that moment, Henry’s scale and ambition toward geometric, abstract painting took precedence, and she began her meditation on the infinite possibilities of geometry and color. She was also deeply interested in the Bauhaus movement. Henry continued in this manner until the age of 90, when she could no longer paint “straight lines and lift the canvases.”